"Amazingly, the milling room was empty. Not a single sack; not one grain of wheat. Not the least trace of flour on the walls or in the cobwebs. There wasn't even the good warm scent of crushed wheat which permeates windmills. The grinding machinery was covered in dust, and the starving cat was asleep on it.
"The room below had just the same air of misery and neglect: a pitiful bed, a few rags, a piece of bread on a step of the stairs, and notably, in one corner, three or four burst sacks with rubble and chalk spilling out.
"So—that was Cornille's secret! It was this plaster that was being moved by road in the evenings. All this, just to save the reputation of the windmill, to make people believe that flour was still being milled there. Poor windmill. Poor Cornille! The millers had finished the last real work a long time ago. The sails turned on, but the millstone didn't.
"The children returned tearfully and told me what they had seen. It broke my heart to hear them. I ran round to the neighbours straight away, explaining things very briefly, and we all agreed at once on what to do, which was to carry all the wheat we could lay our hands on up to Cornille's windmill. No sooner said than done. The whole village met up on the way and we arrived with a procession of donkeys loaded up with wheat, but this time the real thing.
"The windmill was open to the world…. In front of the door, crying, head in hands, sat Cornille on a sack of plaster. He had only just come back and noticed, that while he was away, his home had been invaded and his pathetic secret exposed.
—Poor, poor me, he said. I might as well be dead … the windmill has been shamed.
"Then sobbing bitter tears, he tried to say all sorts of consoling words to his windmill, as if it could hear him. Just then, the mules arrived on the apron and we all began to shout loudly as in the good old days of the millers:
—What ho there, in the windmill! What ho there, Monsieur Cornille!!
"And there they were, stacked together, sack upon sack of lovely golden grain, some spilling over onto the ground all around….
"Cornille, his eyes wide open, took some of the wheat into the palms of his old hands, crying and laughing at the same time: